new kid joe

so there's another new kid in my calculus class. just an update: this is the fourth new kid we've gotten in this class. his name is joe and he is from a boarding school in virginia. woah! two of our other former new kids are exchange students from china. and they are from like the same school. it was weird because they came at different times. another funny thing about joe: last week we (this girl and i) saw him in guidance and were like oh a new kid. the next day she informed a few of us that he was in her third block. funny thing: he didn't start until yesterday and he happens to be in my third block. i thought about calling her out on her white lie but she says random extreme crap all the time (have you heard that she's dating chris brown?). that's basically the most interesting thing that has happened this week.

okay, good night, hasta luego, don't let the bed bugs bite
-em

Christmas, new years, and back to school

lots of fun stuff has been going on lately! i've hardly had any time to blog. Christmas was good this year. since we had our family over on Christmas eve, there was no one on Christmas. so the fam and i just lounged around the house all day. and did basically nothing.

happy new year! this year (or last, haha) we had a party at our house. i invited my friends, sarah invited hers, and my parents invited theirs. it was definitely a party! then the next day i had to pack for our annual ski trip. we went to perfect north again this year and it was awesome! there wasn't really and natural snow at all! it really was not that bad though. i thought i was doing pretty well and i had only fallen once, so i decided to go down one of the slope's most popular black diamonds -- center stage. not the best idea i've had. i started to go down then shortly realized that it would be impossible to ski the whole way down. i had expected to fall once or twice. the thing about falling on a black diamond though is that it is never just a fall. i started out trying to weave around but somehow just ended up going straight. i gained way more speed than i could handle so i knew the only thing i could do was fall. i got about a fourth of the way down. as i was falling, i began to roll, then my skis came off (both of them) and rolled a little more. then i was sliding... backwards and upside down. all together i probably fell a little less than half of the way down. lucky for me, about half of my youth group was watching. haha. they clapped for me. i'm really surprised i didn't get hurt at all. those are the kinds of wipeouts that people see and hope the person that fell isn't dead! haha, jk. it was awesome.

i went back to school the day after we returned home from the trip and found out that i had all the classes that i wanted. there's only one class that i have to have this semester and it is aweful! it's document design and production a.k.a. keyboarding. every teenager in the world already knows how to type so why do they make us take a class that teaches us how? i don't like it but i have to have it. :( and since it's a required class, almost everyone in there is a freshman or sophomore. but i think i can tough it out for 17 more weeks!

party on!
-em

pretty exciting

tomorrow is Christmas! look at the base of that word: "Christ." don't anyone forget that!! when you pray tomorrow, pray to baby Jesus like ricky bobby. no just kidding! but baby Jesus is the reason for the season.

we had my mom's side of the family over today and as some of them were leaving, my 5-year-old cousin spotted a star in the sky and knew it was santa. he came in and got everyone and showed us. it was adorable. everyone got really exited.

i'm having a hard time staying awake. we are going to the 11pm service at church and that is way pass my bedtime. drank some coffee earlier but i don't think it's kicked in yet. :( my parents had a good idea-sleep until it's time to go. it's a little late for that now.

hope everyone has a great rest of the night and very merry Christmas tomorrow!!

-em

i'm a volunteer!

so i got accepted to UT. i guess that's pretty cool. it's the only place i applied so i'm glad i got in. just thought i'd share.
:)

-em

snow!

i do like snow, so don't get me wrong.... but it is so inconvenient! we were supposed to have a choir concert tonight but of course it got postponed. but i had already paid for my dinner so there's money gone that i didn't have to spend. and i had to drive home during the worst part of it! scariest thing ever (not really, it wasn't too bad). tomorrow i was supposed to have a breakfast party in my first block and now that isn't going to happen. and seniors were going to get to leave early tomorrow because we donated a buttload of cans. but now that wont happen either. i was supposed to be hosting a bonfire on saturday night... but guess what? the ground will be too wet. and i had an offer to babysit saturday night that i had to turn down because of the bonfire. now that i find out that it's cancelled, she has already probably found someone else. of course all of these things will be rescheduled but i had already prepared myself for the excitement! guess i can suck it up though. and i won't even get to sleep in because our cleaning lady comes at 7 in the morning! boo snow (on this particular day)!

-em

done with duel enrollment

i just finished my final paper for my duel-enrollment english class! this was the last thing we had to do and we'd be done with the class. it's amazing what i can do when i sit down and focus. the awesome thing is that we still have a week and a half of school left. so party in first block! and we get to leave early on friday because the seniors dominated in the canned food drive. what a great week. :)

-em

black friday

yep, i went black friday shopping. i went to the mall at green hills and it was so not crowded. i got a shirt, a sweater, and a 3-in-1 sandwich maker all for $60. i think that's pretty exciting. several of my friends went to opry mills at midnight on thursday and said it was sooooo crowded. two of them went to old navy and waited in line for 45 minutes! but they got free 1gb mp3 players. i think that's pretty cool. i've got some homework i need to be doing...

-em

i'm pretty proud of my team

tennessee has won their past two games, that's an accomplishment for us. but not only did we win, we beat vanderbilt and kentucky. i don't think anyone expected us to beat vandy. even i was preparing for a loss. but then we owned the first half. :)

-em

twilight?

i have heard so much about this book lately! it seems like everyone at my school is reading it. almost every single one of my friends have read it and they keep trying to talk me in to reading it. when i ask them what it's about they say vampires and my first reaction is, um... no thanks! but then they tell me it isn't just vampires but it's like more of a love story. i still don't think i would like it very much. now they're making a movie? i just think that since i have already made up my mind that i won't like it, if i tried to read it i just wouldn't enjoy it. i like to think that my reading level is higher than that of a book about a vampire love story. i'm not bashing the series, i haven't even read any of the books. i just don't think i'll like them and i think people should stop reading them just because it's the "trendy" thing to do. people who don't normally read for pleasure are reading them because everyone else is. that's just it: it's a trend.

-em

yeah!

the bears won our first playoff game of the season tonight in overtime! woooo!!

-em

prediction

obama's going to win.




i hope i'm wrong...

-em

oh my gosh!
school consumes my life!!

:|

-em

my internet has been down!

i really don't like using my mom's computer but that is the only way i could check my facebook! haha, but seriously. our internet has been messed up for like the past week and i couldn't do anything! i mean, i could if i really wanted to.... but that computer is sooooo slow!! i haven't done anything that exciting though so that's a plus. oh yeah, both of the people my friend (who shall remain anonymous [cara]) and i rolled found out we rolled them (please send us pictures by the way) haha. we got my previous youth pastor and my current youth pastor in the same night. it was fun and a very last minute thing. i took the ACT hopefully for the last time yesterday and i'm pretty sure that is the most exciting thing that's happened all week.

-em

relient k, anyone?

guess who's going to see relient k, live, with tobyMac on december 5th?!?!
i'm super excited!!!!
:)

-em

college=done

well... the very first part of it. i just sent in my application to UTknox and filled out all my housing and meal plan stuff. doing all of this is getting me really excited for next year! i still have to do all my scholarship stuff though. i hate writing essays. :(

logic?

i was editing my side links and such and as i was studying my links to other people's blogs, i began to wonder what on earth my logic was in ordering them. i think i started out in alphabetical order by first name, then i started adding people's last names to the link. the alphabeticalness (yes i made that word up), was then lost. then instead of rearranging them by last name, i just left them by first name. except there are still some that are out of place.....
i guess that's what happened?

-em

it's been a while

sorry i haven't blogged in so long! no excuse except that i was lazy. i have done a lot since the last post.

school started back and we are at our new building now. it's okay i guess but i liked the old school better. the new one is so open and there are so many new rules. instead of being able to wander around in the mornings, we are all in an area called "the commons" until 15 minutes before school starts. if we have a morning meeting we have to meet in the cafeteria, which is nicknamed the "food court." it is nothing like a food court by the way. having like 3 or 4 different clubs trying to meet in one room while there are also other students eating breakfast in there does not work very well.

i started working on my college application. i'm only applying to UTknox because i know that is where i want to go. i have considered other schools along side UT and looked around but UT really has everything i want. all that is left for me to do is my personal statement and i can send it in. i know that once i get my application in i will feel less stressed about it.

my mom and i went to visit my sister in early september. it was a really last-minute thing. she was supposed to graduate from basic training and would have an on-base pass so my mom had scheduled off time from work and booked a hotel and everything. then my sister hurt her foot. there's something going on with her tendon and it was really bothering her. i don't really know the whole issue. so she called and told us she wouldn't be graduating and probably wouldn't get to see us so my mom cancelled our hotel reservations and we made other plans. well the tuesday before the thursday she was supposed to graduate, sarah called and told us we would be able to see her and that she would have an all-day on-base pass. so that wednesday afternoon, my mom and i drove up to ft. leonard wood, missouri. we called the hotel and they still had rooms available. we got to see her all day thursday and some on friday. my dad couldn't go though and he was really sad about it. she'll get to come home for Christmas though! keep praying for sarah while she's doing what she's doing. she really needs it.

school work has been keeping me busy. i have a.p. calculus this year and my teacher had a baby the week before school started. so for the first seven weeks of an a.p. class we had a sub. we watched a lot of videos and talked mainly about limits. it was sad that most of the time we were correcting the teacher. one time she even gave us a multiple-choice worksheet that had a star by all the answers. it was a pretty easy worksheet.... haha.

we are on our two-week fall break now and i haven't done much. i've pretty much just been lounging around my house and hanging out with my friends. there was talk of my family going somewhere but we couldn't get our schedules worked out. i've still been having plenty of fun though....
:)

-em

best friend time

one of my best friends has spent practically her entire summer at vanderbilt doing an academic summer program they offer called pave, so i haven't really seen much of her this summer. she finished up with the program on friday so she and i spent the whole day together yesterday. we made a variety of fancy looking desserts including chocolate mousse and individual strawberry cheesecake. and another favorite i like to call homemade ice cream--all of which were very yummy. we didn't really have a reason to make any food at all really and we weren't even hungry. we just like making food. :)
especially when it's pretty and yummy!








-em

summer sizzler!

a couple of days ago i got back from summer sizzler and it was so fun! there were so many people this year! it was a little tough to do some things and personally i think there were some organization problems. but how could there not be? this year all the behind the scenes stuff that beth morris usually did got put on the design team's shoulders. but everything still ran smoothly and the fun continued. at summer sizzler y.s.f. usually has two competitions: the girls vs boys challenge and the design team challenge. this year the design team challenge was between each individual member of the design team. it's been done in years past and it was eggs on heads. every dollar that got put in a specific member's bag equaled one egg they (including me) had to smash on their head. i had the most with 13 eggs. i didn't feel as messy though as the new ccym who competed in the girls vs boys challenge. the deal with that is if the girls raise more money per capita than the guys, then the guys become human pancakes and vise versa. what all goes in to a human pancake you ask? all of your essentials, flour, eggs, butter, syrup, chocolate syrup, and powdered sugar. this year neither the boys or the girls won, it was a tie! but girls will be girls. the girls of the ccym didn't want to become human pancakes so the boys got to pick three other girls that were there to represent the 3 ccym girls (i didn't think that was very fair). overall though i'm happy about how the event went this year. up next: hands and feet, a two day local mission retreat. can't wait!

-em

woo!

we have volleyball tryouts going on right now and they are three days long. well today i made first cut. we still have tomorrow and then they'll have second cut. the thing about today's cut is that only 5 people were cut. so that means everyone will really have to step it up tomorrow. we have about 30 people coming to tryouts tomorrow and will have anywhere from 16- 20 players. i'm staying pretty optimistic though. if i don't make tomorrow's cut then i have like a "fun list" of things i can do that i wouldn't be able to do if i played. either outcome, i'll be sure to be happy. :)

oh, and we got a new cat. he likes to attack our dogs though so we're still trying to decide if we're going to keep him.

-em

woo caving!

today i spent about four hours inside one of the south's best spelunking areas - raccoon mountain caverns. it wasn't easy i'll say that. but it was really fun and a time i wont forget. we shimmied and we slid, we crawled and we climbed. our guides were like super fast and it was a little challenging keeping up with them. i have been caving before and this was definitely harder. it was a little assuring though that one of our guides was a pretty buff guy and i figured if he could get through these small places then i wouldn't have a problem. certainly a fun trip and i know i'll be sore tomorrow. not sure if it's really something i'd do again. well at least not one that's four hours long!

-em

mission trip

right now i'm in mississippi on our senior high mission trip. we are doing hurricane relief, well i thought that's what we were doing. i havent really seen very much hurricane damage. even the house we are working on is just painting the exterior and replacing some old wood. i think in some way it was damaged by katrina whether it was on the inside or just a little somewhere else. it's still cool though. the lady whose house our group is working on is extremely grateful of what we're doing. we just have to finish about an hours worth of work there and we'll be done. we head home on sunday so until then we'll probably just do some fun stuff down here.



-em

finally

hermitage united methodist church, after nine months, finally has a new youth pastor. think about that, 9 months! i'm so angry that it took that long. anyway. his name is matt sands. he's been going to our church for, well i dont really know how long. he's been teaching our 9th and 10th grade sunday school since january. and our senior high mission trip is when he starts. which means he started 4 days ago. its really exciting that we finally have one but i still cant get over the fact that it took nine months!!!! way too long. and it isnt like we were doing things that postponed the search or anything. we had everything in place in time to have one back in march. oh well. i'm just glad we finally have someone.

-em

my sister's a blogger

well not technically. but my mom and i set up a blog for her to keep family and friends updated on her situation. she's at basic training right now and will be for the next 18 weeks. she can't really post anything right now so for the time being my mom posts updates including conversions we have with her through letters and phone calls. you can check it out if you want at http://www.pfcmastin.blogspot.com

-em

a few pictures

home from a great trip

today i got home from a mission trip in eleuthera, bahamas. we were down there with the bahamas methodist habitat. we were originally supposed to be home last night but of course our flight got all messed up. when we were on the island the plane that was taking us from there to ft. lauderdale was two hours behind. so we had to get our two other flights rescheduled. we had to spend the night in florida and catch our other two planes this morning and in order to do that we had to be up at 4:15am this morning. i'm surprised i'm still even awake.


so here are the highlights of each day we were down there
sunday: fly down to the island and unpack.

monday: first work day--jackhammer a tree stump out of the cement ground in a community center, get to know some of the local kids, go to the beach

tuesday: start putting up dura-rock (i have no idea how you're supposed to spell that. it's a more weather durable version of drywall), jackhammer a funny shaped outline on the floor for pluming, go to the beach, go to the local church for a bible study (it wasn't that exciting)

wednesday: lady with annoying voice from colorado, the other group that was down there with us, talking in amazement about the thunderstorm that was currently going on during quiet hours (she made me very frustrated), finish putting up some dura-rock in the community center and put in a ceiling, go to the beach, go back to the same church for youth group that night.

thursday: work half a day in the cottage the camp is building, go to governor's harbour and shop a little, buy some goombay punch, go to the beach.

friday: work a bit more at the cottage, go to the beach, visit the glass bridge, have a two hour flight delay, finally get to florida, sleep over in a hotel

saturday: wake up at 4:15am to catch our plane home.
:)
and now here i am. actually today was a little bit more eventful. my family got a new washer and dryer today. a new pair was much needed. the one we have now is the same one my parents got when the got married. it's been a while. oh and wednesday was also a little bit more eventful. my sister shipped out to basic training camp in missouri for the army. she will be there for 19 weeks and it's going to be weird with her not around the house.

goodnight my friends,
-em

el 13th de friday

happy friday the thirteenth! my friends and i have a tradition for every friday the 13th--watch scary movies. i'm sure we're not the only one's with this tradition though. we usually do it during the night and sleepover at someone's house but this time we have to do it during the day. we all have the act's tomorrow. they're going to be a little hard this time i believe because we haven't been in school for a couple of weeks. ah well, we can only do our best.

happy friday the 13th!
-em

birthday!

today is my birthday! yay! i am currently at fresh, the tn youth annual conf. i ran for office but no win. oh well. the thing i can't say is that "oh there's always next year" because this is my last year. :( wow what a downer. but i'm fine with it. this is the second time i've been on a church trip on my birthday. last time i was at camp lookout and i was turning 14. today i'm seventeen! yeahhhh!
alrighty then.
:)
-em

happy b-day...

to my sister! she's 19 today. and she is now in the military. yeah yeah i know i kind of already said that a while back but now it's for sure. she leaves for basic training in 2 weeks and will be there for 19 weeks! she'll be at a base in missouri, i forget the name. everyone is so happy for her. it'll be weird without her around for a while.

-em

summuhhh

today is the first real day of summer vacation. we went and got report cards on saturday and yesterday was sunday and we never go to school on sundays. but today is a monday-a usual school day. but not this monday! yay for summer vacation!
[and my birthday is in 6 days. :)]

-em

:(

my cat died today. :*( my mom is really upset. he was her favorite. he sat in her lap every day. we didn't really have him that long, probably 5 years or so. i haven't seen her this upset in a while. i feel sad too but i didn't like him as much as she did. i can't go downstairs to comfort my mom because they (my parents) always have this thing they do when someone or a pet dies. they tell stories about them, my dad tries to be cheerful, my mom sits there and wipes her tears, then they pray. always. it's so sad. my mom took him to the vet yesterday and they did surgery on him today. then tonight the vet went in to check on him and found that he was dead. i think that's why my mom is extra sad, because she never got to hold him knowing that it would be the last time. :(



-em

no more school! [until next year]

i am a senior now! woot! this is the year everyone looks forward to from kindergarten until 11th grade. and yay for straight a's!

-em

i'm such a slacker

i remember back at the beginning of the year when i was leaving for school 30-35 minutes before 8:05-when the bell rings (my school is 15 min. away without traffic) -and doing all my homework before the day it was actually due and going to all my club meetings at school actually trying to get good grades. now i'm leaving like 20 minutes before 8:05, barely getting in there on time and missing a bunch of meetings and procrastinating most, okay all, of my homework. most of the time i finish in the class it's due in. i hate doing this. and being late at our school is a big deal like if you are walking in as the bell rings there are a bunch of our principals are in the halls and they write us up and if we are late more than 3 times we get i.s.s. ha, i was such a goody-good. now i'm a normal high schooler... what is normal? haha, just kidding! i'm really excited about being at a new school next year but at the same time sad. the school we're at now is soooo old! seriously. it has been through so much, tornadoes, fires, flooding. and it's still standing. our new school's gonna be freakin awesome though. i haven't actually been inside it but i've driven by and it's huge! next year school is going to start at 7:50! that's 15 minutes sooner than it currently does for those of you who can't figure out that i already told you what the current time we start at is. ha, just kidding. it's further from where i live than the one we're in now. it's going to be so hectic. the road it's on is like an inch wide so traffic is going to suck. i mean, it already does.
i do enjoy sweet tea.

-em

switchfoot in nashville!

yeah yeah! they make a return to nashville. they will be at the wildhorse saloon on april 21st with third day and robert randolph. sounds pretty awesome right? yeah. i probably won't go. :( i'm too lazy. haha.

i took an act practice test and scored a fairly reasonable score. exciting.

i have been kind of wrapped up in thinking about and hearing other people talk about the issues with "phasing out" the tn conf. programming positions. i kept hoping it was like an april fools joke or something. although that's a bit outrageous. that would be a good joke though. speaking of april fool's jokes, these two guys i know (they used to help with my youth group before my church kicked them out) are movie producers and they started posting bulletins and blogs on myspace about how their company was getting sued for using "die hard" in a movie title and they didn't have permission to. well long story short, they didn't really get sued or even get threatened to get sued. it was an april fool's joke! it was really funny though. but some people got really mad and had contacted like their lawyer friends to help bail these two guys out. i still thought it was really funny.

i guess i should do something more useful with my time... like sleep.

night,
-em

i must be lame

it seems like whenever i try to make new friends, they don't want to be friends with me. :( like, i'll try to talk to them and stuff after i've met them and they don't want to respond. or if i see them again, they just ignore me. it's so sad. i feel pathetic. nobody knows how to be nice anymore. or if it seems like i became friends with them, the next time i see them they seem careless. then i'm all like, i thought we were friends! and it's not like it's just them. i'll see them talking to and hanging out with some of my friends that they just met. am i not "cool" enough for you? they're the one's that are lame. i'd say i'm a pretty good friend.

-em

game over

i have to go back to school tomorrow. :( oh and i got the schedule for next year... listen to this, we go back august first to get our schedules and get a feel of our classes-2 hours. pretty normal. then we go back ten days later on the 11th for the first official day of school. crazy. i think we start so late this year because we are going to be at the new school. i'm pretty excited but it's a lot of memories that i'm leaving behind at the old building. i have to leave my mark. i've already written in two or three of the lockers. i'll be sad if they get new ones. they are turning the old high school into a middle school. i want all the middle-schoolers to look in the locker and be like, hey, that emily girl is pretty cool for writing in a locker with a lime green marker. haha. back to the schedule. we get out officially june 6th-report card day. we're out the fifth and have finals the two days before. i'm not sure when graduation will be next year because of the wacky schedules but i'm pretty sure it's kind of an important thing to figure out considering i'll be graduating next year! i can't believe it's so close. well i guess i better get going on getting things ready for tomorrow.

oh and happy easter!!!!

-em

good friday

today and yesterday were two of the most important days for christians. i had intended to go to our church's maundy thursday service... but i forgot. i don't know how i forgot because i had been thinking about it all day and i just forgot. :( i was really sad when i remembered. then today i didn't go to a service. our church didn't have a good friday service this year. i don't know why. it seems like today is kind of a big deal. i mean, this is the day that we remember as the day Jesus died for all of our sins. it upsets me that our church didn't have a service. it's not like we completely didn't do anything though. our church sanctuary was open all day for people to come and pray. although i don't understand why our sanctuary has locked doors in the first place.
something to think about: it always rains on easter.

-em

almost gone

spring break 08 is almost over. and i did mostly nothing. i didn't go anywhere that exciting and i pretty much just stayed at home. i mean it's not like i was a complete couch potato the whole two weeks but i definitely didn't do anything a few of the days. it makes me sad that i didn't even think about going anywhere but it seems like when i thought of going somewhere i just imagined it being super crowded because it was everyone's spring break.

-em

spring break=college tours

everyone knows spring break junior year means time to start looking at colleges. last week i visited the university of tennessee-knoxville and vanderbilt. i like different things about both schools. ut has so many advantages of being a student. like the really nice gym free to any student. i also like the laid back feeling and that freshmen can have cars on campus. vanderbilt was so much different from ut. they had nicer dorms first of all. freshmen aren't allowed to have cars there though. and the overall vibe was... more spick-and-span than that of ut. i really like that it's in nashville though. i like nashville better than knoxville and it's close to home. and there's more national diversity at vandy so lot's of different kinds of people to meet. both campuses were pretty. i think i'll keep looking and i hope i can find somewhere that is in between those two.

-em

we already all know about this

i don't even know what to say about the whole programming positions thing. i've tried to hold off posting anything until i felt i had enough facts about the situation. i have thought about it a lot and i've thought about what i want to say to the bishop about it but nothing has actually come out in writing yet. sometimes i have (don't make fun of me) conversations with people in my head and i have had some imaginary conversations with the bishop about how much beth morris has positively influenced my relationship with God through what she does. it doesn't feel real. when my mom told me, i just froze. i didn't have anything to say. it seems so far fetched that i almost couldn't wrap my mind around it. i know for sure it is all i have thought about since monday. i'm really happy that someone set up a petition to reinstate the posistions so quickly. i keep thinking if the people who made the decision to eliminate the positions knew what they were getting themselves in to. like if they had any idea how much the youth of the conference were going to find out and how much we were going to do about it. i wonder if they even knew if the youth were going to find out this quickly. we have multiple emails floating around, facebook messages, facebook groups, myspace bulletins, text messages, and probably several other ways of getting word about it and the petition out. then there's also the many many letters, emails, and phone calls the bishop has been getting. i know of an entire youth group that did nothing for youth tonight but write letters to him about it. i have heard of youth also emailing him and calling him and not holding back on how they feel about this. with as big as our conference youth group is, i don't think these "vision changes" are going to be permanent.

-em

similarities

i have noticed that a lot of the profile pictures on blogs i read are somewhat elusive. (well minus eric. but it's still a cartoon of him.)







some i have used:




-em

college time

our [two week!] spring break started today so it's a perfect time to start visiting colleges. this week i'm going to tour university of tennessee-knox and vanderbilt. it was hard to find an open time for ut. they only had one day and one time open for the entire month of march. i didn't realize how far in advance you have to schedule these things. vandy was a little easier. the second week of my spring break was full for them but this week held a few more options. so i have two tours two days in a row. :/ it's kind of exciting i guess. i think i'm the first of my friends to actually go and look at colleges. my best friend already knows she isn't going to school in tennessee. she wants to go to this little school in florida. i hope she doesn't because that's so far away. :( she's also looking at another small one but it's just in georgia. my other friends haven't even mentioned college.

oh man i'm so tired. even though it's only ten it's actually like it's 11 o'clock. daylights savings time tonight! don't forget. i bet a lot of people are late to church in the morning. haha

-em

snowww

it snowed last night.... a lot (a lot for tennessee anyway). every thing i had planned got cancelled. a coffeehouse last night, act prep and a b-day party this morning, and an event i was going to do tonight with a club at school - all cancelled. i was suprised the thing for tonight got cancelled. it seems that cocidering the weather in the past, they'd have known the snow would melt by then. and what's sad is that they didn't call to tell me so i drove all the way to the school and back for no reason. :( i'm actually glad it was cancelled because i really didn't want to go. we were serving dinner to another club that sponsers us. it sounded extremely boring. but the other stuff sounded fun. so sad.

-em

procrastinating yet again

blogging is a great was to procrastinate. i have 3 papers due tomorrow in creative writing. it isn't that i don't want to write them... because i already did. i just have to type them now. that's not really my favorite class. i'm not that great of a writer and that's pretty much what we do in there all the time. the assignment this time was that we had three papers and one had to be poem. the first one had to be serious and have "some suicides are never recorded" incorporated in it somehow. the second one was a humorous one and was 8 good reasons to lie to a guy. the last one was just a free write which we do way too many of. what's hard for me in writing is description and taking something i've put in and expanding off it. doesn't sound that tough but when you're writing for a class you don't care about, you tend to not care about the writing. well i guess it's typing time now.

peace
-em

ahh!

crazy tennessee weather? most definitely!
wednesday-all counties out for snow
saturday-day at the park
sunday-you'd be crazy if you didn't go outside in the 75 degree weather.
today-windy but in the low 70's
and now it's storming.
omg

-em

it's time to come back

sorry i haven't blogged in weeks. and i don't really have an excuse. we have had a few days off from school and some days i have just sat at home and done nothing. but school work has definitely kept me really busy. this semester's workload is a lot different than last semester. i have pre-cal now and we have work in there almost every night. then i have two writing classes that keep me busy.
i watched the lunar eclipse last week. it was cool i guess.
yesterday i went to my friend's birthday party at centennial park. she turned 18! that was fun.
my dog is sick. :( not dying sick but it's pretty gross.

i absolutely loved the weather today! i hate wearing jackets so today was amazing. i played a little volleyball, drew in my street with sidewalk chalk, played frisbee, and i was going to fly a kite but i couldn't find it. :/
so yeah... amazing.

movie review: superbad
i did not like it. i thought it would be really funny but now i just think it was just really built up. it might have been one of those movies that you just have to watch with the right people.
i have a list of movies i want to see:
penelope
horton hears a who
the love guru
drillbit taylor
semi-pro
the other boleyn girl
juno (still haven't seen)
jumper

yeah. it's a lot. but they all look so good! it's hard for me to find a movie i don't like. i usually like most movies if they aren't action. i'm not really an action movie fan. or a sci-fi.

spring pictures are tomorrow. so goodnight
-em

we are...

out of school for yet another day. if we had been out yesterday, that would have been a 6 day weekend! but we weren't. probably for the best. today we were out for "sickness". sure a lot of people were were sick but what really happened was people skipped. i heard a lot of people say to other people to skip thursday so we'd get out for sickness. people were texting about it and by word of mouth. so i guess it worked.
aren't we scheming.

-em

happy valentine's day

i didn't have anyone to share it with this year but that's okay. i'm content. happy v-day yo!
-em

snow day!

woot woot!
(even though there isn't really that much snow. haha. gotta love tennessee!)
-em

warmth in winter

i just got back a few hours ago from warmth in winter and let me just say it was ammmmaaaazinnngggg! this was my fifth year going and i think it was my favorite. our speaker, bob stromberg, was great and a really strong speaker. i met some new people and got closer to friends i already knew. i got to stay in the hotel this year which rocked. i really really really liked everything about warmth in winter this year. the entire time i was having fun. this year we had mini and lifesize cut-outs of beth and gavin and the mini gavin came with us to satco and we took pictures--the adventures of mini-gavin. i can't wait til next year. so much more fun to look forward to.

-em

mmmmm, crazy

its raining, with tornados.... in february! nothing came my way in good ol' mt. juliet. it went north, south and west. but around our lovely city. i cannot believe this crazy weather. why is it like this. it's weird too because warmth in winter's theme this weekend is "eye of the storm".
my aunt lives in bellvue and that's where some of the really bad stuff was. she's out of town so we were worried about her house and her dog. there was a house not too far from her that fell to the ground. :( and there's people out driving.... laaaaaaaaaaame.
oh, and i'm going to have a 5 day weekend! thursday we have parent/teacher conferences so no school. friday i'm not going to school to go set up for warmth. then its warmth in winter time! although i doubt it will feel like winter time. today i wore shorts and a short sleeve shirt... with no jacket! i know, i'm risky. haha. but seriously, it was like 73 degrees! in february!!!! gotta love it.

-em

:(

i obviously shouldn't be a psychic. and i'm obviously not. i do have to say, though, that the giants did deserve to win this game. the patriots went out there like they didn't care. i wonder if there was some behind the scenes drama going on with them. but the giants were so energetic and played a great game. which is why they won superbowl number 42.
-em

i'm calling it

the patriots are going to win. yeah its already the third quarter and they're ahead but some people still think the giants have a chance. one of my friends is going for the giants and i told her the patriots deserve to win. she says they are all egotistical and don't deserve to win. but they do. they are a good team even if they are big-headed. it doesn't matter what their personalities are like, they are a good team and got this far without a single loss. why lose now? they can win if tom brady steps up his game. the giants are a good team too (obviously) but they aren't the team that's had a perfect season. its funny how almost every american looks at the superbowl as a holiday-type thing. people actually cancel plans just to make sure they can watch the superbowl.

-em

the wonderful world of entertainment

so i'm sitting here watching my favorite show (degrassi). one of the main characters, spinner, has cancer. it is really hitting him hard. i started getting sad and really feeling for him. then i realized how caught up i am in a world that doesn't exist. before i was watching degrassi, i was watching a movie on disney channel about time travel and the characters were really struggling with who they were and how they got there. i was really really into it. the entertainment world does a great job of getting people caught up in things that were just thoughts in people's minds that happened to be made into images. i begin to wonder and want friends like some of the characters i see. then i remember that that will never happen because those characters are just... characters. i seriously can't get over how caught up we get in the imaginary world of television (most of it anyway).

um, prank?

on saturday while we were on ski trip, some of the girls (including me) thought up a prank to do to the guys. there wasn't much we could think of that wouldn't damage the cabins we were staying in but we finally thought up to freeze their boxers. we went back from dinner early and went in their room searching for their boxers. it didn't take us long because there were only 13 guys that went. we just had to make sure we got the right people. we folded them up and put them in the freezer. they froze together in like a box shape. it was really funny. the next night we were going to give them back all nice and frozen together but when we opened the freezer they were gone. we thought that maybe they found them and took them but they never said anything. finally about 2 hours later travis, one of our adults, came out and we were all freaking out and he was like, "oh i know what your talking about." we were excited that the boxers weren't really lost but we thought travis told them so we were kinda bummed. buuuut, he told us he thought they were left from a previous group so he hadn't said anything to the guys. he and ms. linda decided to keep them and they would hang them up during breakfast... all nice, unfroze, and dry. so that's what they did. it was all extremely lame but if the boxers hadn't been found and we had finished our plan, it might have been better. :(
so i'm home now and i'm extremely tired. i had so much fun skiing. it was a little ironic. there was no snow anywhere except on the slopes-i mean no where. we would be standing at the top of a slope and look out and see green grass. it was strange. oh and it was literally 2 degrees during the day. i think the highest it got yesterday was 9. it was so cold and windy.
i'm a little sore and like i already said, tired.

-em

skiing

so i'm sitting in the lodge right now while almost everyone is outside night skiing. i don't think it's something i would want to do. i heard someone saying it was extremely icy and i'm not exactly the best skier in the world. i mean i don't fall but i stay on the easy slopes. and we've already skied all day today so i'm a little tired. we went to a different place this year than we usually do... i can't say it's the best-slopes or housing. we're sleeping at a church camp about 30 minutes away from the slopes so that part isn't much different. it feels like we're in the middle of nowhere.
i guess it's time to stop being anti-social.

-em

thursday

thursday it was raining insanely hard. our principal, good 'ol mel brown, let anyone who could drive out 20 minutes early. as i was walking all the way to practically the end of the lower parking lot against the sideways rain, i stepped in about 4 puddles. i got in my car and took my shoes off (considering they were soaked!) then i began to drive off. as i drove down the narrow back road of my school, the car in front of me splashed an insanely large amount of water on my windshield along with the water splashed on me by the school bus going the opposite direction. i couldn't see anything! thankfully i got down mt. juliet road just fine but then as i turned on to lebanon road, the rain and lightning began to pick up. it was raining so hard that i could barely see the lines on the road let alone the road itself. thank goodness for the good driver in front of me with their lights on other wise i don't think i would have made it home safely. the rain began to lighten up about 2 or 3 miles further down and i made it home. everybody agreed that if we had been let out on time, the rain would not have been nearly as bad and we would have been just fine. but no, mr. brown can't predict the weather so he let us out before the extreme badness. this is also the day my sister informed me of her enlistment in the army. she was going to meet me at school to tell me but of course, i left early. she had to spend the night at a hotel and get up around 4:30am for an all-day physical. she is extremely excited that she's doing this. i'm proud of her, too. she's been trying to get in for about 8 months but her a.d.d. prevented her from doing it. the recruiter told her she had to be off her medicine for a year before she could get in. so she did. and now she's in the army. please keep her in your prayers.


and i had to get a shot yesterday. boo. :( it hurt.
-em

new classes!

they are all really boring but really easy. maybe that's why they're boring. i don't know. but the only class that seems half way exciting is going to be my pre-calculus class... that has to say a lot about my other classes. i actually have friends in that class. my other classes just have super random people in them. i have two writing classes (which seems pointless).

i need chapstick...

-em

snowball fight!

but how can you have a snowball fight with no snow you're asking?
well, you get flour and pantyhose/socks, and a bunch of people. you cut up the pantyhose and put flour in each cut up section then tie it up.
we all went outside to the street and had a snowball fight! it really did look like it snowed when we were finished. i looked so pale. it was fun. we went out in the woods to run from the guys and i walked right through a thorn bush. so now i have these mad scratches on my leg. but it was worth it. we had a lot of fun.
oh and i dyed my hair back to its natural color (brown). not too drastic. it was already pretty close before i dyed it.
hope everyone's new year has been good so far!
-em

warning: this is a completely pointless post.

okay weird, random, i know.

last night i couldn't sleep. i have no idea why but i just couldn't fall asleep no matter what i tried. then my dad comes upstairs and starts talking to my sister and he's telling her how he can't sleep. and obviously she couldn't either because she was awake. then this morning i got of facebook and someone's status was that they couldn't sleep! it was so weird. nobody could sleep last night!
anyone else have this problem?

-em

it snowed today!
:)
-em

recap of 07

january: warmth in winter
theme-learn to fly
strangely i don't remember much from warmth. i do remember, though, that the church we stayed at was super creepy. in the middle of the night we got woken up by some random singing. we call her the hippie. we never actually saw her. oh and there was the scary Jesus statue we found. i remember more about the church than the actual event. haha

february: ski trip
lots and lots of snow!

march: the alleged pickett state park trip
we never actually got there but we still spent all day just driving around

april: car wrap! nuf said

may: this is pretty much a good sum-up
and daytona

june: mission trip

july: laser-tag lockin and youth 07

august: start school as a junior and summer sizzler; theme-good enough. i had to eat this nasty jello, bean, vienna sausages, and much more gross stuff. oh man that was horrible.

nothing interesting for semptember

october: pumpkins and squirrels and youth pastor-less and cool school

november: sr. high retreat more youth pastor-less... ness

december: merry christmas and my first pass out

i finally got it in. it might not still be 2007 on some places but right here right now, it is. what can i say? i'm a procrastinator. :P

happy new years eve everyone!!

-em

good story:

it's actually not all that great but it's a first

so i'm about to start on this new medicine and before i can take it i have to have blood work done. today i went in to get the blood drawn and i had to fast for 12 hours before. well i get there and get my blood drawn and right after i have it drawn i start feeling light-headed. the nurse tells me to lay down so i do. they tell me my color starts to come back in my face so i sit up. then as i am getting ready to walk out the door, i start feeling light-headed again and my sight starts getting black. i start to turn around to go back in the room to lay down again and they ask me if i'm okay. the last thing i remember is saying no and then i passed out!!! i have never passed out before today. my mom was right behind me to catch me so i didn't get hurt. she laid me down on the floor in the office hall and when i woke up they were telling me i passed out. the first thing i said was that i didn't pass out. but then i looked around and noticed i was on the floor so it was kind of hard to deny. my mom told me i had only passed out for about 15 seconds. when i woke up i just sat there for about 5 minutes. they went and got me cookies (yum) and a bottle of water then everything was better. it was so weird. it didn't feel like any time had passed between the last thing i remember and when i woke up. i remember dreaming sort of. it was so weird. i really wish i could remember it all or been a fly on the wall. all i can say is just that it was so weird. i guess now i know i shouldn't be a blood donor.

-em

merry Christmas again everyone!
guess what??



i got a nikon d40! i like it a lot.
some of the family came over yesterday and if they weren't here yesterday they came today. actually some people came yesterday and today. fun stuff.
i hope you all had a greeeeaaaat Christmas this year. happy early new year, too.

-em

merry Christmas, happy holidays

i'm pretty sure this is one of the best Christmas songs of all time. you have to watch it alllllll the way through!!




how can you not love 'nsync? they're definitely the best.
-em

so true

i loved this! it's so trueeee!



-em

there is a person in my life right now that this is about. just don't get mad or offended reading this. to say the truth i'm just not strong enough to come right out and tell them.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
i don't want to be friends with you anymore.
you are not the person i thought you were
you've changed so much in the past few months
or maybe you haven't changed at all
and this is how you have always been
it just seems like now i'm really noticing
because you're allowed to come out of your shell
when your held back in a world of safety
and you're around people you influence
you have to watch your every move and every word
but that world is gone
the real you shows
and that's not the person i thought i was friends with
why can't you just change back to the person you were before
that person was such a good friend
and a great person to talk to
this "change" makes me not want to trust you with my feelings
i don't feel like you are a person i can come to now
when you keep secrets from me,
how can you expect me to trust you
some secrets, i agree, are better left unsaid
some of your secrets are things about you that i did not want to know
it was even an accident that i did know
you never tell me anything on your own
i have to find out for my own
so why should i tell you my secrets
there are closer people i know,
people i love and people i can trust
people i know i know.
you have even drifted from God
even if you say you haven't
the way you do things and express yourself
show me that you have
if someone met you,
wouldn't you want them to know you love God?
but you don't
you curse, you drink, you... do other things, too
but you say these things make you happy
that they keep you from hiding your true self
well if this is your true self then i don't know if i want to know you
the reason i still talk to you is because i keep hoping for the old you
but if i met you, the person you are now, now,
then i don't think you would be a person i would be friends with


sorry if this hurts but i had to get it out
i hope we can still be friends
i really do want to be friends with you
and i know i should accept you for whoever you are
but it's just so hard
i haven't even known you that long
and i'm not asking you to change
i really just want you to be faithful to God
i think this might be why i don't like you
i am finally getting closer to God
and the one person i thought i could talk to about it
is gone and drifting
from me and God
how can i talk about getting closer
to someone who's getting further
you might not be getting further
but i know you aren't growing closer
how could you be?
you certainly don't show it.


-em

Christmas shopping

Christmas is in 9 days and i have done zero Christmas shopping. i haven't had any time. Christmas snuck up on me this year. i usually do like candy or chocolate dipped pretzels or something holiday-ish like that for my not-so-close friends at school and i didn't even do that this year. i only have to get gifts for 4 friends this year. i don't know if that's a bad thing, meaning i don't have many friends or a good thing meaning i don't have to spend that much money. haha. then there's those weird friends where you feel awkward getting gifts for because you don't know if they got you anything and you know you're getting them a gift for the goodness of giving them a gift but then they feel guilty for not getting you anything. yeah, i have a few of those. i guess it's always better to get someone a gift rather than ponder about their response to the gift. i'm nervous that when i go Christmas shopping, everyone else in the world will also be going late Christmas shopping so it will be extra crowded. i guess that's what i get for holding off to the last minute.

-em

ooo fun stuff

i got my class ring yesterday! it's so cute! i'm really happy with it.
last night my friends, cara and sallie, and i all had a study session at sallie's house. we are all in the same chem. 2 class and that class is crazy hard. yesterday our teacher informed us that our lab notebooks were going to be due today. she thought we knew that all along but we all assumed she wasn't really going to take them up so none of us did them. so last night cara and i went to sallie's house to finish them up. when i got there we worked on them for about an hour but then we just started getting hyper and acting crazy. we left her house around 7 to go to kroger to buy some stuff for extra credit in her class. while we were there we decided to get her some Christmas presents. we had to get some paper towels for part of the extra credit so then we started playing football in the store with the paper towel rolls. oh and by the way, we decided to be super ghetto and wear aluminum foil grillz to the store... i took mine out because i already looked tacky enough without it. it was so much fun and so random but we actually got a lot of work done. by the way we finished our lab books and turned them in and our teacher liked all her gifts we gave her. :)
2 half days left of school! (finals)
today i had a party in my first block class, did my last day of the news in my second block, studied for the final in third, and went to another person's class because they were having a party in fourth. yeahhhhh, i'm random. :P

-em

poor alex

so my friend alex got in a wreck yesterday on her way to school! she's only had her license for about 2 months.
here's what happened: the road that she goes to school on is really curvy and it was slippery because it had rained. she was going around the first curve and her steering locked up! the car swerved and went off the road, into the air, and in a ditch... on its' side. it fell over on the drivers side. she had to crawl out through the sunroof. she wasn't speeding and she had her seat belt on so she didn't get hurt bad. she only had a bruise. the car wasn't hurt that bad. obviously the steering was messed up but the side view mirror broke and something on the front. she told me they had to total the car. :( it was a '97 explorer. she was worried that her dad would be extra mad but she said he wasn't.
she was so freaked out. i'm glad she was okay. :)
i'm the only one of my close friends that hasn't been in a wreck/fender bender yet. one of my friends backed up into another car in the school parking lot and put a dent on the back of her car. my other friend was driving at night (she was going rolling. lol) and she was backing out of someone's driveway and hit a tree. she put a dent in the back of her car too. when i had my permit i was pulling in our garage and was too far over so i knocked off the side view mirror and dented the side a little. i didn't even notice the side until about a month later. i guess we all have our times when it comes to driving.

-em

i'm still not done doing anything. i'm working on lab reports right now... sort of. on wednesday i have one of those lab reports due, a project due, a notebook due, and a test... all on wednesday!
we still have the rest of this week for school and finals on monday and tuesday next week. boo.
ok so i cannot believe that tomorrow it's supposed to be 75 and on saturday it is supposed to get down to 28! it's sooo crazy. kind of like school.
this is a painting i did for my project. it's on the history of this symbol. we had to have a visual so i painted one. :)


yeah so i'm not exactly an excellent painter but whatever. it was easier than making a powerpoint.
so i'm pretty sure i need to start proof reading my posts....
i love God!

-em

time is a runaway

this week i've been so busy!
monday: prom committee meeting after school
tuesday: ACT readiness class after school and a warmth in winter committee meeting downtown
wednesday: stay after school to clean everything at my lab station in chemistry and youth
still to come:
thursday: warmth in winter management team meeting
friday: prepare for the ACT and my dad's birthday
saturday: take the ACT's and finish end of the year stuff

i like to be busy so i'm not complaining. it just so happens that this week i am super duper busy with meetings and such. i usually only stay after school one or two days a week for random things but this week i've stayed after 3 days in a row. i still have to do two lab reports for chem. and get my dad a birthday present.
i probably shouldn't be spending 45 minutes on my computer with all these things i could be doing. what can i say? i love to procrastinate.

i love that it is super cold outside.
:)

-em

how does God make the sky look so amazing?

life

so these four guys at my school won 1,000 dollars in a local radio station contest. the contest was to create a commercial for the sation and all the videos entered were put online and the viewers voted. whoever had the most votes won and the guys in my class won. this is the second time a guy that was in the commercial and helped edit it has won a big contest. it's kinda cool i guess.

jon foreman of switchfoot is making a series of four cd's over the course of the next year titled fall, winter, spring, and summer. fall came out wednesday and i listened to some of the songs from it on his myspace. they are really good. i might be a little biased knowing that he is from switchfoot and switchfoot is like my all-time favorite band.

early wednesday morning my mom and my sister left to drive to oklahoma to go see my sister's ex-boyfriend graduate from basic training so it's just me and my dad in the house for 4 days. the ceremony was today and they said it was really nice.

my dog is sick. :( he's throwing up and... well some other stuff. i don't think i need to go in to detail..... i'm hoping he'll be okay.

i've been really in to "to write love on her arms" lately. i don't know why. to write love on her arms is a non-profit organization dedicated to spreading hope and finding help for people who have suffered from depression, self-injury, and addiction. i have never suffered from any of those things and nobody really close to me has either (that i know of). so i dont know why i feel like i wanna help them so much.

i am sooooo ready for Christmas. i feel like it will be a lot different this year in a lot of ways, ways i don't feel like explaining because i'm tired and ready to go to sleep.

-em

go vols!

ok, so i'm pretty sure last week's game against vandy was nothing compared to today's! ut went in to 4 overtimes against kentucky and won 52-50!! it was so exciting.. i wouldn't have guessed this game would have run this long. it was insane! just a little fact for those who might possibly care, erik ainge, ut's quarterback, made 7 touchdowns in this game breaking the ut record for most touchdowns in a game...

peace everyone
-em

happy turkey day everyone!

hope it's great!




-em

i'm angry

i'm not as angry as i am sad. the only hope of our youth group staying together after losing our youth pastor has been kicked out. any adult leaders that we had volunteering now have to be members of the church. well let me just say that we had about 5 that were not yet members. these people were just working for God to help us. they were all friends of jonathon that came to help out regularly and after he left, they stayed which showed a great deal how much they cared for us and about what they were doing. two of them had been with us for over a year and the others helped out when we went on trips. the pastors' reasoning for asking them to leave was that they needed to be members of the church to be leaders. technically, the rule applies to lay leaders, not the awesome people that are volunteering to hold us together.

also the "real" adults that help with the youth are putting together what they call a youth council. in my opinion it's not much of a youth council as much as it is an adult council. we have already been volunteered to sing a song in our children's christmas play in december. i can't speak for anyone but i'm pretty sure nobody wants to be forced to sing a song for a children's play. the worst part is that they are taking up youth group time to rehearse it. i don't know who they are expecting to be there because everyone's going to stop coming since the only reason some people were even still coming after jonathon left was because of tyler and mellow (two of the adults they asked to leave).

i have stated to the right people what i think about the whole situation and that is unusual for me. usually i just go along with whatever they hand us but i can't take it anymore. they people in charge of youth now say they asked the other adults to leave becasue it was best for our situation. BUT IT WASN'T!!!! making them leave because they weren't members of the church would just make our situation worse!!!

these are some of the awesome people who can't come back.

thank you, God

my life is so good right now. i can only pray that everyone around me had as good a life as mine. (i'm not bragging about my life i'm saying that the almost all the people around me are have issues). i thank God that i am blessed to be getting good grades, have no relationship issues, have no medical problems, have my parents still be together, not losing a best friend, not have anyone close to me die recently, be making good choices, not be getting kicked out from somewhere i love to be and never thought a person could get kicked out of. all of these issues i am blessed to not have yet i still feel depressed and empty a lot of the time. everything i listed is an issue that at leats one of my close friends is going through and it really sucks for them. i don't know how they have these things happen to them yet they still act cheery. i think i'm really being hit with their issues because i care so much about them and i want to help them as much as i can. all i can do is ask God to be with them. they are all just so optimistic and worry-free. i give them kudos for that.


-em

sr. high retreat

i just got back a few hours ago from cedar crest camp. i was there with about 27 other people for the sr. high retreat. there were probably only 3 people there i knew and a few that i had met before but never really talked to. with the small number it was really easy to get to know everyone that was there.
the first night we had small prayer stations set up inside.
the next day was a pilgrimage-type day. we hiked around the camp in groups and stopped at stations along the way. one we did that i really liked was one where we had to walk a short way with a rock in our shoe then we got to the next station and we thought about names we had been called or called ourselves that hurt us. then we wrote them on a girl that was stading there. we were supposed to think about how God doesn't want us to walk around with all these words weighing us down but let God have these words. then we took the rock out of our shoe and thought about how it was easier to walk without it in there. saturday night we did kind of what we did last year. we broke up in four groups and planned the sunday morning worship service.

i think i got a lot out of the weekend and i'm really glad i went. it was much needed for me. it actually wasn't as cold as i had planned it to be (which was good).

also: pray for my friend and her family. she just lost her grandfather and it taking it kind of rough.

=)
-em

i'm pretty sure i'm feeling a lot better than i did yesterday. no need to worry. i'm getting things done and worked out so it's all good.

-em

tough

i'm so overwhelmed with life right now. i don't know how to handle it or what to do. i just want to fall asleep and sleep for an entire day and everything will be better. too bad that can't really happen. i guess it's better to actually live through tough times rather than just letting them blow over. then you can learn from them and make sure they don't happen again (although they probably will). there is just so much on me right now that i can't figure out how to make time to work it out. all i can do right now is pray. :)


-em

switchfoot has a new song out. they recorded it with the lead singer from relient k and a guy from ruth. the song is called rebuild and it is amazing! it's about habitat for humanity. then the fires in california (where switchfoot is from) and relient k's tour bus catching on fire made have such a personal meaning for the groups. i love it so much. i wish i could see them play it live but they aren't coming to nashville. but they are going to atlanta, knoxville, and evansville... everywhere except nashville basically. it makes me sad that i can't go see them. i bet the three put on a great live show. i have seen relient k in concert and switchfoot in concert... but not together. oh man.


-em

happy halloween!

i celebrated by handing out candy to the little kids that stopped by.

randomness: i won 5 dollars today for selling magazines for my school. it was a life changing moment (not).


and that was my super-exciting day.
(obviously i'm in a sarcastic mood.)

-em

class of '09

i ordered my class ring today. my mom didn't think it was worth the money so i offered to pay for half of it. i'm really excited about getting it.

here's a picture of it. the top isn't really what it looks like in the image.
/Users/emilymastin/Desktop/Jostens Share My Ring Designer.webarchive

last night was our first sunday night without jonathon and i have to say it went pretty well. other than having such a small number of people, i think we will be having good nights at youth. we started out playing a 90's trivia game girls v.s. boys and the girls dominated! we knew the answer to every question including the ones the boys had. then we related that to how jonathon left in some broad way. we wrote letters to him that these two young adult helpers are putting in a scrapbook. it was good and i wish more people had been there.


-em

my old volleyball coach got arrested

my former volleyball coach and teacher at my school was arrested a couple of days ago for statutory rape. she taught at mt. juliet two years ago and was only there for that one year. i don't know what she did last year but this year was her first year at gallatin high school. what's sad is that this wasn't much of a suprise to some of the people that knew her from mt. juliet... including me. here's a piece of the article from the story news channel four had:

"A Gallatin High School teacher was charged with statutory rape after being accused of having sex with a 17-year-old male student at her home in Nashville...

Nashville police charged social studies teacher Holly Hatcher, 25, with six counts after she admitted having sex with the teenager on six occasions in the last two months. She was arrested on Thursday.
Police affadavits said the teenager drove to her home for the encounters and that it was consensual sex. One time the student told his parents he was at work, the affidavit said. Another time the two went to the Nashville Zoo before returning to her home...

Hatcher has been released on a $6,000 bond in Davidson County and a $15,000 bond in Sumner County, and has resigned from the school, where she also coached volleyball and softball..."

2am, what?!

this week my school, mt. juliet high, was news channel 4's "cool school" of the week. we were on the morning news and had live feeds so everyone that wanted to participate had to be there by 4a.m.! it takes me 15 minutes to get to school and we had to be there early so i had to get up at 2:15!! i still can't believe i got up in the middle of the night to go to school. we were there from 4-7 having live feeds every 25 minutes or so. sometimes they just recorded so it was about every 10 minutes they made us act hyper and excited (not that we aren't already...). everybody that showed up went to the gym then it was like a massive pep-rally. we played really good music (soulja boy, cha-cha slide, old-school stuff, etc...) and they recorded the 1100 people that were there dancing on the gym floor. almost the entire school was there. i think they said we had 600 people from our student body that weren't there! also if we went we got to leave at 11:00. the only bad thing was that it was so early and nobody had eaten breakfast so there were 4 people that passed out including our mascot. they had to take her to the hospital. i felt so bad for her because she was supposed to sing live with our school's vocal ensemble. = (

here's a video of some things they recorded wednesday. the two teachers they show are teachers i have right now. one for trig. and one for chem. 2. there was some more footage they showed this morning that i was in but it didn't make it on the internet.
http://www.wsmv.com/video/14422767/index.html


-em

i do love rain

indeed.



-em

exercise during class?

so a motion was just passed that all the students in wilson county schools will have to have 5 minutes of exercise in each class everyday. don't get me wrong but isn't this what p.e. is for? they say they're doing this because too many americans are overweight and by doing this we will have at least 90 minutes of exercise each week. i heard one teacher is making his class run around the school (and our school is pretty big). why take up class time trying to get us to learn exercising habbits when they could force us to take gym or join a team. the majority of the people in our school are on a team already and some sports require the team to have gym as a class along with daily practice. one of my teachers says she isn't going to do it because we need that class time to get started. another one of my teachers says we are going to do yoga (she teaches trig). we were trying to convince her that our exercise should be dancing. but seriously, is it really necessary for us to stand up during class so we all do jumping jacks or whatever just so we won't be overweight? i don't really think this is going to work. last year everyday we were "required" to write a reflection in each class on what we learned... nobody did that. we start exercising on monday so we'll see how it goes...


-em

it's been a good two years

well it's has been almost two years. jonathon will no longer be the youth pastor at hermitage umc. actually he isn't even going to be a youth pastor. he is going to be like a counsellor for troubled teens. well that's how i understood it. i had a little trouble paying attnetion. i know that what he is doing is the right choice and i think hermitage is ready to get another youth pastor. he will be missed by a lot of the people in our church but hopfully we all understand that what he is doing is good. i know that i will miss him a lot!! i sound like i'm talking about him as if he died... haha. well i know i will still see him but i'm still going to miss having him around like all the time. but God has new plans for him.


-em

post # 101

my last post was post number 100 for me!




today my mom and i went hiking at the stone door. it was really crowded so we figured there must be a church at beersheba. we were right. we ran into some people from west end united methodist and had like a five minute conversation with them. i love going hiking and today was such a great day to do it. the weather was perfect. it was the kind of weather where no matter what you wear you're comfortable. i love days like today. = )


-em

i have more pictures from the trip at flickr.com/photos/emilykm

attack of the squirrel

i was eating lunch today at satco and i was there with toria and two other people. squirrels are fairly popular and social i might add at satco. they do not fear people at all. one squirrel wandered over to where i was sitting and toria reached out wanting to touch it. i do not know why. then the squirrel jumped up on toria and all four of us screamed. the we laughed and everyone around us just stared at us. it was reallllly funny. it might have been one of those things where you had to be there but it was so funny!

by the way i love the way the weather is right now...


-em

the tennesseean must like us

today as i was working the pumpkin patch at my church a guy stopped by who said he was from the tennesseean. he said he had been looking for a good halloween story and as he was driving by he saw our pumpkins and got a story idea. so we talked to him for about 15 or 20 minutes about how we use the money we raise and the kind of people that stop by. he took our picture in front of one of our little scenes and got all of our names to put in the paper. jonathon and abby lemons were quoted and he told us the story will run on halloween!


-em

i'm mad

so i was going to go to fields of faith tonight after i got out of disciple at 8:30. the invitation said it wouldn't be over until midnight. as it turns out, it ended at 8:30. so i didn't get to go and i'm sure a lot of people show up after 8:30 expecting it to still be going on but i guess they will soon find out that it is over. = (


-em

random, pointless thought

could you make cookie dough cookies? i mean like the same way you would make m&m or chocolate chip?


-em

it's pumpkin time!

the pumpkins are here and i am getting ready to go out there in a few hours and unload them! we went to wal-mart today and got stuff to decorate the area with. it is imposible to go to wal-mart and not play with all the stuff. we were first in the kid's area and we found a jesus doll that spoke bible verses! it was... interesting. then we went down the halloween isle and i saw a pirate hat. well in a few weeks our school has homecoming and one of our days is pirate day. so i bought the hat and an eye patch. i found it amusing.

-em